It's time to get
angry. Department for Transport (DfT) is following a road safety policy
that they no longer believe in because they would rather save face than
save lives.

I'm quite sure that
they used to believe that 'speed cameras saved lives', but in the last
few years that's changed.

In May 2005 they
decided that speed camera side effects needed to be researched.

In December 2005
they discovered that neglect of a statistical bias had exaggerated the
main benefit of speed cameras by 400%. The claimed '100 lives per year
saved at speed camera sites' is downgraded to 25 lives saved.

In June 2006 they
discovered that the ongoing beneficial trend in road crash serious injuries
was just a feature of the way these crashes are reported. Hospitalisation
statistics don't show the same trend. Road deaths don't show the same trend.

In September 2006
they discovered that the proportion of injury crashes involving any speeding
vehicle nationally was only 5% - not the 'one third' that they had
previously claimed.

In 2007 it gets nasty.

In January the new
funding for speed cameras was announced as grants given to local authorities.
They quite deliberately chose not to ring fence the funding in the
full knowledge that this will lead to a budgetary squeeze that will help
speed cameras to fade away. There's also a transfer of responsibility for
cameras away from DfT and towards local authorities - that's because DfT
don't want the flak.

In March we learned
via Freedom of Information request that the speed camera side effects research
(announced in May 2005) had been axed. It is inconceivable that the side
effects DON'T cost more than 25 lives per year, meaning that speed cameras
are making road safety worse. But DfT doesn't want to hear this, which
is the only possible reason for axing the most important research.

So here's the truth.
Speed camera policy has failed catastrophically. Department for Transport
KNOWS that it has failed but won't admit their deadly mistake and
pull the plug. They seem to be hoping that speed cameras will fade away
over the next five years, yet they know that the policy isn't working and
is costing lives. If that's not a reason for road users to get angry, I
don't know what is.

What can you
do?

- You can help us
by joining the campaign or
by donating.
I can't stress enough how important this is. We're on a shoe string budget
and desperately need better funding, but we're right at the forefront of
putting this mess right. We're fighting against massive resources and need all
the help we can possibly get.

- You can sign our
10 Downing street petition to 'scrap
speed cameras'. At the very least this will help us
to highlight the need for far better information, and ultimately for road safety
policies that work.

"Last week, the government
announced a three-month moratorium on further speed cameras. This was partly
in response to the work of engineer Paul Smith [Safe Speed's founder],
who has spent 5,000 hours finding out why, though the number of cameras
has risen exponentially, there has been no corresponding reduction in traffic
fatalities. He concludes that, far from acting as a deterrent, speed cameras
take responsibility for safe speed away from drivers, and their concentration
from the road. Cameras are as likely to cause an accident as to prevent
one." (link)

"While I still have this
little soapbox, I would like to urge all of you to throw your weight behind
two organisations: The Association of British Drivers (www.abd.org.uk)
and Safe Speed. They talk an awful lot of common sense, and heaven knows
we need a voice right now."

North Wales Daily Post
(September 2006):

Supporters of speed cameras
will say that even 5% justifies their existence. But critics, including
the Safe Speed Campaign and this newspaper, who believed the government's
simplistic single-solution approach to road safety was actually counter-productive,
have also been insisting for years that cameras could themselves be a contributory
cause of accidents by distracting drivers. This view also now seems to
have been largely vindicated by the DoT's findings.

Everyone concerned - not
least this newspaper - wants to see road deaths reduced as far as is humanly
possible, but the argument has always been how best to achieve this. By
insisting that "speed" is the main culprit which can safely be left to
cameras to enforce, many police forces until now have taken resources away
from patrolling roads looking for bad, incompetent and dangerous driving.
Other more effective and cheaper (but non-revenue raising) calming methods
have also been dismissed. No, we were told, speed kills regardless of road
or weather conditions or the competence of the driver. (link)

Road Safety

Road safety is complex, subtle
and sensitive like a precision built clock.

After over 100 years of living
with motor transport we have learned much about how to manage enormous
potential danger on our roads. We have learned as individuals, we have
learned as engineers and we have learned as a society. Road safety is finely
tuned and balanced and for the most part works very well indeed.

Road safety is primarily
a matter of psychology.

Speed Camera

A speed camera is a blunt
and heavy instrument, like a hammer.

It has far reaching effects.
It changes driver behaviour. It changes everyone's safety priorities. It
changes the way the roads are policed. It has done immeasurable damage
to the police / public relationship. Far from being a precision tool, it's
the equivalent of a rather heavy and badly aimed hammer.

Professor
Mervyn Stone, hired by Radio Four to examine the Safe Speed case wrote
(June 2004):

“Turning now to the written
statement of Mr Smith, the reader should know that I have downloaded most
of the files, acquired most of the papers to which he referred, and gone
through them with as much care and attention as I could summon. In itself,
an achievement of sorts - but paling into insignificance compared with
that of Mr Smith himself. He has single-handedly taken on the road safety
establishment. He has brought to the fore hitherto neglected questions
with admirable forensic skill and logic. He is a gad fly par excellence
whose bite must have already irritated many in the road safety world who
prefer a quieter way of dealing with issues. His piece is a powerful polemic
attacking the interpretation that others have placed on the body of evidence
about the relationship between speed cameras and accidents.” (link)

new:
Sunday Telegraph: Christopher Booker's Notebook (October 2006):

Slowly the facts about
speed emerge

'We're here to save lives."
No one can use Bath station without seeing this slogan blazoned everywhere
over the floors, advertising something called the Avon & Somerset Safety
Camera Partnership. A year ago I reported here on attending one of its
"Speed Camera Workshops". The message dinned into us for three hours was
that "speed" is responsible for a third of all traffic accidents; that
the definition of "speeding" is breaking a speed limit; and that, therefore,
by stopping drivers speeding, speed cameras were saving large numbers of
lives.

Fortunately, thanks to
a detailed brief from Paul Smith, the road safety expert who runs www.safespeed.org.uk,
I was able to show how every single statistic used to support this case
was wrong. And now the Department for Transport (DfT) has finally published
new figures that support Mr Smith, and show that the number of accidents
involving motorists breaking a speed limit is only 5 per cent.

Mr Smith's general point
is that, for 30 years, Britain enjoyed the safest roads in Europe, with
road accident figures in continuous decline. Only in 1994 did that rate
of decline markedly diminish, when the government put speed cameras at
the centre of its road safety policy. This, he argues, was a disastrous
misjudgment, only justified by massaging the statistics, which the DfT
has at last done something to rectify. (link)

A
VERY IMPORTANT BOOK Launched September 2006

Safe Speed highly
recommends MIND DRIVING by Stephen Haley:

Comment

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road
safety campaign said: "I have been saying that Department for Transport
is 'institutionally unable to understand the process of safe driving'.
The single best thing we could do for road safety right now is to stop
all work at DfT for just one day and require everyone there to read MIND
DRIVING. At the end of the day there will be light."

"Every driver MUST read this book."

Synopsis

Driving is the most dangerous thing that
most people do. This book explains how drivers can dramatically reduce
the risk. Expert drivers use a lot more than conventional driving skills.
The key is not just in what they do but, crucially, how they think. This
has always been the most vital part of safe driving, but no one has found
a way to explain the mental processes involved. "Mind Driving" explains
how expert drivers think. Revealed for the first time are: what really
causes danger on the road, how to control the danger, how to make life-saving
decisions, and how to enjoy driving and do it safely at the same time.

Safe Speed does not
campaign against speed limits, but instead calls for proportionate and
intelligent enforcement of all motoring laws. Speed cameras have proved
to be far from intelligent and far from proportionate.

charlatan: In usage, a subtle
difference is drawn between the charlatan and other kinds of confidence
people. The charlatan is usually a salesperson. He does not try to create
a personal relationship with his marks, or set up an elaborate hoax using
roleplaying. Rather, the person called a charlatan is being accused of
resorting to quackery, pseudoscience, or some knowingly employed bogus
means of impressing people in order to swindle his victims by selling them
worthless nostrums and similar goods or services that will not deliver
on the promises made for them. The word calls forth the image of an old-time
medicine show operator, who has long left town by the time the people who
bought his snake oil tonic realize that it does not perform as advertised.
(from wikipedia)